


i've loved you three summers now, honey (but i want 'em all)

by LittleHandGrenade



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Fix-It, Idiots in Love, M/M, it is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:14:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23087599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleHandGrenade/pseuds/LittleHandGrenade
Summary: They fight a psychotic supernatural clown (and win!) one summer when they’re 13 years old.That’s just the beginning.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	i've loved you three summers now, honey (but i want 'em all)

**Author's Note:**

> (Title from the song Lover by Taylor Swift’s because yes, I am a cliché.)

They all fight a psychotic supernatural clown ( _and win!_ ) one summer when they’re 13 years old. It’s as awful as it sounds. They come out of the sewers covered in black water ( _and who knows what else)_ and Eddie has to use all of his self-control to stop himself from crying. They’re alive, but somehow it doesn’t feel like a complete victory.

“ _Probably because we smell like Eddie’s mom’s vagina_ ,” says Richie, always classy. Eddie punches him in the arm and rolls his eyes at him. Richie’s smile grows wider, yet Eddie can see what hides behind the big front teeth on full display and the crinkles missing on the corners of his eyes. Because Richie knows, just as he does, that Pennywise and Bowers might be gone, but everything else will be pretty much the same.

Eddie’s mom will remain at home, trying to convince him that he’s fragile, _weak_. And he has spent so many time believing her he’s not sure he can do anything else, no matter if he has just beat up a supernatural creature from the sewers a couple minutes ago. She will be always there, just like Richie’s neglectful parents and the oppressing silence inside the Trashmouth’s house he desperately tries to fill with jokes.

A few steps ahead Beverly laughs and Ben blushes, but there’s a sense of dread that refuses to leave Eddie’s heart, pumping that terrified feeling and spreading it all over his body.

_They won, but did they really?_

**-**

Weeks after that evening, Eddie still can’t sleep.

Derry’s summer nights are awful, everything feels too warm and too sticky, but he knows that ain’t it. Even if Pennywise is gone, _IT_ will always remain in all the losers’ memories and every time he closes his eyes, he can still see him lurking in his dreams, and when it’s not him, it’s the leper.

He’s tossing and turning in his bed, wondering how many hours of sleep he has left before sunrise. His alarm clock is gone after his mother heard on the news a story about one exploding in a woman’s room and causing a fire on her building. Eddie thinks is ridiculous, but he doesn’t say anything. It wouldn’t really change anything, his mother would just find another thing to worry about and he’s honestly _just so tired of fighting_.

All he wants is good night’s rest, for fuck’s sake.

After another couple of minutes, he finally gives up, huffing as he sits on his bed. He’s considering cleaning his room or something equally ridiculous when a noise outside his window startles him. He freezes for a moment, the sound of his name coming to his ears as a whisper.

 _He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead,_ he repeats inside his head as a mantra as he walks to the edge of the window, a white sneaker held tight on his right hand as a weapon. He bites his lower lip, taking a couple of deep breaths before looking outside.

“Hey, Eds” calls Richie, down on the other side.

“Don’t call me that,” he answers out of habit, although the relief on his voice gives away his lack of anger “ _What are you doing here?_ ”

“I was thinking about paying a visit to your mom, but she must have forgotten I was coming and left the door closed.”

Eddie glares at him and for a moment in which none of them say anything else. Eddie keeps looking at him as if he were the most annoying person in the world and Richie remains still, except for his left feet that moves to the rhythm of whatever song is playing inside his head.

“I couldn’t sleep” Richie admits finally, breaking under the silence. Eddie understands. He’s about to tell Richie he’s going to open the back door for him when he realizes the other boy is already climbing the drainpipe fixed on the wall in the corner next to his room’s window. He almost screams at him about how he’s going to get himself killed, but then remembers his mom is asleep in the next room and if she wakes up to find Richie trying to get into his room then she will _definitely_ kill him, and Eddie would rather his mom not murdering any of his friends any time soon.

After what feels like the most tense moment in his life - and that really is something considering he was about to be murdered inside a crack house by a demonic clown, Richie reaches the second floor before practically throwing himself inside his room. Eddie helps him, holding Richie by one of his arms until both his feet are touching the floor in Eddie’s room.

“May I ask what keeps awake a fine man like you at these ungodly hours, Eddie Spaghetti?” Richie asks once he’s finally standing inside. He’s wiggling his eyebrows in a suggestive manner while speaking in the most obnoxious attempt of an English accent. Eddie makes a disgusted face at him.

“The asshole climbing in my window at midnight, obviously” he answers, sounding angrier than he intended. It’s the lack of sleep starting to speak for him. He sees something like guilt strike Richie’s features, but it disappears almost immediately under an unreadable grimace. “Sorry” he says, and he means it. He and Richie bicker and insult each other a lot (well, Richie mostly insults his mother, but the sentiment is the same), that’s nothing new. However, they never mean it, and Eddie would rather die first than making Richie believe he’s another one of the people who find him unbearable “I couldn’t sleep either, I haven’t in a while.”

If he’s still taken aback, Richie doesn’t show it. He lets himself fall next to Eddie, both of them looking through the window to the impossibly black midnight sky. A few seconds pass and Richie, of course it’s he, is the one to break the silence.

“Do you want me to tell you a bed time story, Eddie-bear?” he asks, a smile spreading over his face. Eddie knows that look, and it can only mean trouble.

“Don’t you dare” he warns, his fingers clasping against the edge of one of the pillows that rest behind his back. Richie rises one eyebrow and opens his mouth, but before he can let a word out a pillow is clashing against his face, crooking his glasses from their position over his nose and leaving him dumbfounded. Eddie giggles and the sound of it seems to take Richie out of his stupor.

“Folly! Thou shalt perish for insulting my honour…,” Is Richie’s battle cry still in that stupid English accent as he gets a hold of one of the pillows. Eddie shrieks, trying to run away but to no avail. In mere seconds the room turns into a battlefield, both of them screaming and laughing, and as a noise comes from Sonia’s room, trying to stifle their laughs and failing as soon as their eyes meet because the other is making a funny face. After that they declare a truce and end up lying on Eddie’s cramped twin bed, tangled limbs and voices that talk about everything and nothing, because there’s something about Richie that makes it feel so easy, because even if he loves talking to any of his friends, Richie is his favourite (but he’ll be damned before saying it out loud).

That’s how after weeks of being unable to close his eyes, the morning finds Eddie Kaspbrak sleeping soundly with Richie Tozier’s arms wrapped around him. Somehow, he finds that with Richie by his side, it’s a little bit easier to believe that _yes, after all, things are going to be all right_.

**-**

Two years later Eddie’s fifteen and more often than not, he still has nightmares. Even tough Richie would never say it out-loud Eddie knows he does too. That is the problem with fighting with a murderous clown to save your small Maine town; you end up with irreparable sequels that will follow you the rest of your life, no matter how hard you try to forget it.

Since that night when Richie first came into his bedroom window, Eddie always leaves, it open, whether it’s raining or snowing. And every night since then Richie comes in, sometimes with that ridiculous smile of his, sometimes looking angry or worse, sad –and Eddie always tries his best to cheer him up on those occasions, even if Richie won’t talk and tell him what’s going on, even if Eddie does a terrible job at not looking hurt because of it.

Then there’s times like this night, when he comes bearing presents, accompanied with a mysterious smile.

“This tastes like shit” Eddie says, passing Richie the small bottle of vodka the other teenager produced from one of the interior bags of his denim jacket a couple of minutes ago.

“Would you prefer a warm glass of milk, Eddie-bear?” asks the other teenager in a mocking tone before taking a sip. He too makes a disgusted face and Eddie rolls his eyes at him and his ridiculous attempts to look tough.

An hour or two go by accompanied by couple more of sips, and while they have downed the content of the bottle to more or less a half of it, Eddie notices it has stopped tasting so bad. Or maybe is because he can’t be bothered to think about it while he’s giggling at Richie as he tells him a ridiculous story –but then again, when does he not?

“Where did you get the bottle from, Trashmouth?” asks Eddie, dragging slightly the end of the words. He giggles at the sound.

“Bev gave it to me before she left last week, said it was a present for me, the _bestest_ of her friends” he says, looking at Eddie with a raised eyebrow “You better be careful Eddie-Spaghetti, she seems determined to become my best friend.”

“As if” says Eddie, elbowing him in one side “I might as well write her a greeting card for finally getting you off my back.”

“You wound me Eds,” answers Richie, taking another sip of vodka “Might as well leave and go to Mrs. Marsh now, seeing that she _does_ appreciate me” as if to show he’s serious, he attempts to stand up only to fall back on his ass as he gets dizzy.

“She lives more than seventy miles away from here don’t be an idiot” Eddie is not sure when did he hold Richie’s arm as if he really was going to leave “And don’t call me that, asshole” he adds as an afterthought.

“I see how it is Eds” Richie says, apparently ignoring his words and going for a southern Belle accent that sounds more as if he were constipated “You like to act so though and manly, but you really like me, don’t you honey?”

“Shut up” he says, lying his head in Richie’s bony shoulders. He means to close his eyes for one minute, but when he wakes up there’s a soft thread of light sneaking through a small gap between the curtains. His mouth feels as if he had eaten cotton for dinner, and he has to blink a couple of times before he stops feeling groggy. There’s this weight on a side on his head that takes him a couple of minutes to realize is Richie’s head resting over his, because apparently they decided to fall asleep in the most uncomfortable position ever. He moves and Richie groans, but he doesn’t wake up, tossing his head back until it is resting on one of Eddie’s bedside.

Eddie forgets his attempt at standing up and picking the empty bottle lying in a puddle of vodka on the floor –Richie must have dumped it while he was sleeping making all that was left leak into Eddie’s room floor, deciding instead for watching attentively the boy by his side until the room around him stops turning.

His eyes scan Richie’s hair, dark and curly, almost chin-length and sticking in all directions. Then he notices the glasses, crocked over his face.

Eddie gets closer to untangle them from the mess of hair from where they’re precariously hanging, taking them off before they fall to their imminent death. _There’s only enough tape in the world to keep holding them together_.

The sunlight coming from the window hits Richie directly on the face and the boy makes an annoyed face but still refuses to leave Morpheus’ land behind.

It’s there, looking at him under the morning light, that it hits Eddie like a thousand bricks falling over him.

Richie ‘ _Trashmouth_ ’ Tozier, his best friend since he was only a kid, _is_ _beautiful_ , he realises, unable to take his eyes off him as his heart skips a beat.

**-**

It’s the summer after their first year in high school when he and Richie kiss for the first time. They’re both sixteen and positively more awkward looking than they were when they were children. Richie is ridiculously tall and gangly, long curls covering his face and his glasses, even thicker than the ones he wore in their childhood; Eddie still is too short for his age, and his face hasn’t gotten rid of all the baby fat yet.

“Cute, cute, cute, cute” Richie practically screams as he pinches Eddie’s cheeks, just as he does every time they’re close enough, (which seems to be pretty much all the time if Eddie’s being honest). The smaller teen tries to swat Richie’s hands out of his face as he feels his cheeks growing warmer, blushing. He knows Richie is just making fun of him, there’s nothing cute in looking like a tall (even if that’s just for saying something) 13 year old, specially not while standing next to Bill’s lean figure, Stan and Richie’s angled cheekbones or Mike and Ben’s broad shoulders.

“Can you fucking stop that?” Eddie screams, pushing him away. Eddie knows he’s been acting more annoyed than usual but it’s the warmest week of the summer and he feels like he’s about to combust juts by being near the other boy. Having Richie touching him and calling him cute –even if it’s a joke, doesn’t help to ease that feeling. Ever since that day a year ago in which Eddie woke up with Richie by his side, there’s been something tickling under Eddie’s skin every time Richie is close to him. And over the last couple of months, that feeling has only grown stronger, bigger. He knows it’s not the hot weather of this summer what threatens to make him melt with its touch, but he also knows there’s nothing he can do about it except maybe avoid Richie until he gets over it.

But Eddie Kaspbrak is not only and idiot who feel in love with his best friend, he’s also a masochist, and if there’s something worse than being close to Richie that is not being with him at all.

“But Eds, it’s true, you’re the prettiest lad all around this shitty stinky town,” Richie says, wrapping one arm around Eddie’s shoulders. He has to take a deep breath and close his eyes for a minute to stop himself from doing something stupid, like running away or worse, kissing Richie. If only the rest of the losers where there, he would throw a panicked look at Bill to beg him to save him from that situation. However, his friends left a while ago, and Eddie and Richie are the only ones left in the barrens, looking at the sun set on the distance while the Trashmouth’s old boombox plays a mixtape to fill the silence between them.

If Bill where there, he would also tell Eddie that’s a perfect moment to talk with Richie about his feelings –even if he has sworn to keep quiet about it forever. Eddie bites his lower lip, squirming over his seat, over one fallen tree trunk. He’s trying to think about something to say, but Richie interrupts him before he can say a word.

“Hey, Eddie” he says, and Eddie turns to look at him in confusion, because he has never heard him use that tone with him before. If he didn’t knew him, he’ll say Richie is nervous, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot” he says, attempting for a smile, but Richie remains serious, so it doesn’t last.

“Are you mad at me?”

“What?”

“It’s just…” Richie looks at the dirt, tracing odd figures in it with his index finger, next to his feet “You’ve been acting weird around me lately and I thought maybe you were mad at me?”

“I mean, it’s no secret you can be quite annoying,” he says light-heartedly, but Richie is still looking shaken, “Rich, why would I be mad at you?”

Richie’s eyes still don’t meet Eddie’s, and he licks his lower lip. Eddie can’t help but follow that motion, his eyes fixated on Richie’s pink plump lips.

“I thought maybe you had noticed,” says Richie, his cheeks coloured in a soft shade of red.

Eddie gives him a confused look “That I had noticed what?” he asks, but his words sound muffled under the sound of his heart, beating right into his ears. Where he and Richie this close since the beginning?

“That I-I, I think I love you, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Eddie can’t help it when he kisses him. It’s wet and sloppy, he has never done this before, and he knows if it were any other person he would be screaming about how unsanitary the whole thing is. But he’s kissing Richie, and holy shit, _Richie is kissing him back_.

Eddie holds onto Richie’s curls and the Trashmouth’s long fingers hold onto the back of Eddie’s shirt. It feels like centuries, and yet, once the kiss is over, Eddie feels as if it wasn’t long enough. They’re almost panting, trying to catch their breath but they remain close, so close the air between them feels warm. So close Eddie can count every freckle on Trashmouth’s cheeks and sense that characteristic smell of him, worm gummies and cigarettes (a nasty habit he acquired thanks to Bev a few summers ago, way before the red head girl moved to Portland with her aunt). 

He smiles. Richie smiles. And then, they’re kissing again.

**-**

They move to New York on the last two weeks of summer. They’re eighteen years old and between both their savings, they’ve managed to buy a 1980 Chevy Corolla that threatens to fall apart at any second. It would probably help if Richie didn’t drive as carelessly as he speaks, but Eddie guesses that’s just a default setting on the Trashmouth’s brain.

They just ended saying their goodbyes to Mike and Bill, Stan left a couple of weeks before them, and Ben followed not too long after in direction to Seattle. They made their promises to meet as soon as possible and as far from Derry as they can. Everyone is going to different places, but they will always be the losers, and they’ll always have a place in each other’s hearts.

Then again, Eddie’s bigger one is sitting next to him anyway.

There’s no more scary clowns or bullies, no more tiny terrible towns where every day feels the same as the rest, but the idea of a new beginning far away can be just as scary. Yet, when he turns to look at Richie, at his dopey smile and shiny eyes, he knows they can do that and more.

They fought against IT, they fought against Bowers, and they’re leaving Derry.

 _And if there’s one thing Eddie Kaspbrak knows for sure it’s they can do that and more as long as they’re together_.

**-**

_Can we always be this close? (Forever and ever)_

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about posting this since 89404 years ago when I first wrote this (ok, it's been since August when Taylor's album came out, but it feels like it's been centuries). I hadn't done it because I wasn't sure it was good enough, but you know what? Fuck it! It deserves to be published because I made it with all the love I have for these two losers (*ba dum tss*). I tried to check for any spelling mistakes but I'm drunk out of my ass, so I probably missed something (yep, that's the reason why I decided to publish it, nothing like liquid courage).
> 
> Warnings I should probably put at the beggining: English is not my mother language (all corrections are more than accepted), and I've listened to 'Lover' more than 10 times, so I don't even know what's real anymore.
> 
> @ starkbuckgirl : don't expose me in the group chat
> 
> Anyway, leave a comment or IT will come after you (I'm not joking, he ate my dog).


End file.
